Thomas had an uncanny sense of direction. Once, when his father and I were walking home from work, I spotted this tiny, barefoot child – our child – coming toward us on the footbridge. He was perfectly calm. I was freaked out. I asked him where he was going, and he said simply, “I was coming to find you.” He had to navigate his way past several buildings and cross a very busy street traversed by army vehicles and public buses to get to that bridge. I have no idea how he knew the route to take. He was 3 or 4 at the time.

Though there is a tendency to mythologize the loved ones we’ve lost, that distinctive scar on Thomas’s forehead was not the result of some superhero derring-do. When he was 2, he ran into a vanity in the bedroom and split open his forehead. The doctor at the infirmary said he would probably be more traumatized by the process of sewing it up than he would be by having a permanent scar. I suspect he made up a much more interesting story whenever anyone asked him about it. (Speaking of scars, a mail truck backed into Thomas’s head on Mass Ave in Cambridge while he was minding his own business waiting for the bus. He skipped the necessary stitches then, too.)

Thomas was an avid Dungeons & Dragons player. When he first started playing in high school, there was a huge national scare campaign, claiming that D&D was satanic and that it turned players into maniacal killers. Knowing nothing about it other than what I read in the press, I was a little worried – until I heard who his fellow players were. I was fairly confident that these kids would not turn my boy into the next Clyde Barrow or Al Capone. He continued to play with this group of now middle-aged folks for decades, through COVID and cancer. It was one of the joys of his life. 

Thomas was arrested in Milwaukee when he was a teenager. He and a friend-girl, not girlfriend, went to Milwaukee for a D&D convention – or at least that was the official story. The young woman happened to be White, and at the time, Milwaukee happened to be the most segregated city in the country. They were arrested on trumped up “trespassing” charges at the hotel where they were paying guests. It was Thomas’s first – though not his last – real experience with racial profiling. When Mama Bear heard about it, she threatened to sue the hotel and inform the media of this obviously racially motivated arrest. In order to avoid bad press, the hotel reimbursed the kids for their hotel charges and withdrew the complaint with the Milwaukee Police Department. It was a life lesson that could have ended a lot differently. 

At one point in his life, Thomas was fluent in three languages – English, Swahili, and Dutch. 

Thomas generally has no love for animals. If forced, he expressed an affinity for cheetahs and turtles, which is ironic given that cheetahs are the fastest land animals and turtles are among the slowest animals. Or maybe it’s not ironic at all. Maybe it perfectly encapsulated who he was with his mind racing at speeds few could keep up with, while his actions were slow and deliberate to a sometimes aggravating extent.

When Thomas was a sophomore in high school, he and a friend decided to grow out their hair with the goal of getting dreadlocks. It would take a while for their hair to grow long enough even for starter dreads, so they sported afros for quite a while. It should be noted that back in the early 90s, afros and dreads were not at all fashionable. His friend gave in to peer pressure and cut his hair, but Thomas persevered. Thomas’s sister Catherine was mortified! She was convinced that he was growing out his hair with the sole purpose of ruining her life. She begged him to cut his hair and begged me to make him cut his hair. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. At 16, he got his hair twisted for the first time – just to show how unfashionable this hairstyle was at the time, we ended up going to a White woman stylist because we couldn’t find any Black stylists who could or would do it! Eventually, Catherine came around, and even admired her brother for being a trendsetter and something of a rebel. 

Thomas’s Grandpa Jack taught him how to play Chess on a handmade leather Chess set crafted by his Uncle Pat. When Grandpa Jack died, Thomas was given the Chess set, which he, in turn, used to teach his son Akenna how to play the “Game of Kings.”